Immanuel Kant

WARNING!!- This post may make you think that I am a bitter cynic and jaded with life....if so, so be it...it doesn't mean that tomorrow I won't be full of optimism and hope for humanity!! If nothing else, I hope people get out of this blog that opinions are just that, opinions, and they also have the uncanny ability to make people mad, depressed, worried, concerned, disconcerted, etc. So please, don't write saying "I'm praying for you," or "You need to seek help,"- because this blog is supposed to be all about life, the ugliness of it as well as the beauty. I feel as though I have to preface some of my comments to reassure people that I'm OK, that I enjoy debating, arguments, and opinions for their own sake, and that I do not necessarily BELIEVE in everything I write (as though it matters anyway) but that I enjoy provocative discussion (maybe the lawyer in me?). It's not SUPPOSED to be safe and bland. SO anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!! Everyone acts because it in some way gives pleasure or they wouldn't act- we cannot get past our selfishness and why should we not accept it? Everything is done because we value something else enough to go through the "bad" part of it. As far as Immanuel Kant's theory, doing an act disinterestedly, under duty, is the only way the act is moral. But that act isn't moral either. If you hate an act but do it out of duty, it's because in some way, you prefer "doing your duty" and the accolades or reprieves it gets you over the bad ramifications of not doing it. A truly moral act would be one undertaken that gives the actor no good OR bad feeling at all. But I can't see how that's possible. It would just be random and meaningless. No one does good acts for no reason. At the least they want "brownie points" with God for the next life. Or they just want to "feel good" by helping. Another conditioned societal trait. It wouldn't feel good to give to the poor if we didn't have it drilled into us how important "alms-giving" is, for good works. It shouldn't be surprising. Like all animals, we strive to the extent possible to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. The difference is, we rationalize the acts, think about them, analyze them to death and come up with elaborate reasons why we act in the ways in which we do.

Camille Paglia

I've been reading some of her recently. I don't agree with a lot of her views, but I do believe in her brand of feminism. In that- toughness, no special treatment, being able to do as much as a man, as good, with no "handicap" treatment. There should be no allowances in the workplace for soccer games, sick kids, etc.- a feminist woman should want to be, and should be, held to the same standard as the most accomplished man. And Paglia celebrates and promotes anything that rebels against society, the "norm," with some type of existential protest against our biological destiny-to the extent it can be done. Of course, any of that is simply THAT person's biological (genetic) aberration, or environmental conditioning, etc. But still, to be different, and unabashed about it - she admires that. Keeping the "wild" wild- not white-washing it, not making gay couples into "Leave it to Beaver,"...like, what happened to celebrating your deviation, your differentness, your refusal to conform to society, and even to rebel against humanity's own biological fate? Simply not having children is a huge protest. As a general rule, people who are interested in ideas and have a certain level of intelligence and curiosity become non-conformist automatically. Because it wakes you up to the fact about how our social mores are mostly biological programming, much of which is vestigial, and not applicable today- so people can, to some extent, quit being slaves to their biology. Even though they cannot escape it altogether, they can figure it out, many times, and then develop technology, medicine, etc., to get AROUND that biological dictate. I guess this post has two different lines of thought- but I hadn't written in awhile so I kind of got off on a tangent. :)

"A Very Easy Death"

I am copying an excerpt from the book "A Very Easy Death" by Simone De Beauvoir. This is a book about the death of her mother. I found this very profound, as my grandmother just died in March. She was 94, and had severe dementia for several years, but I still was very moved and upset by her death. I think that this book excerpt captures my feelings about it : "'He is certainly of an age to die.' The sadness of the old; their banishment; most of them do not think that this age has yet come for them. I too made use of this cliche, and that when I was referring to my mother. I did not understand that one might sincerely weep for a relative, a grandfather aged seventy and more. If I met a woman of fifty overcome with sadness because she had just lost her mother, I thought her neurotic: we are all mortal; at eighty you are quite old enough to be one of the dead... But it is not true. You do not die from being born, nor from having lived, nor from old age. You die from SOMETHING. The knowledge that because of her age my mother's life must soon come to an end did not lessen the horrible surprise: she had sarcoma. Cancer, thrombosis, pneumonia: it is as violent and unforeseen as an engine stopping in the middle of the sky. My mother encouraged one to be optimistic when, crippled with arthritis and dying, she asserted the infinite value of each instant; but her vain tenaciousness also ripped and tore the reassuring curtain of everyday triviality. There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation."